|
Warning: graphic medical photos to follow. I realize it's not something everyone wants to see, but I find stuff like this compelling rather than revolting, so proceed at your lunch's own risk.
Scope Day went extremely well. Both kids went into their procedures without protest (they were honestly too lethargic and lacking in calories to have done much about it) and woke up from the anesthesia calmly. Minifobette was knocked on her ass by the whole thing, and slept on the living room floor for the majority of the day after I brought her home. But Minifob recovered within an hour of waking, and had a great time playing minigolf and videogames with Mr. Clod until his sister's box accumulated its 8 hours' worth of photos and shut off, enabling him to come home. Both kids ate a small amount of dinner (and kept it down--they'd both had some problems with vomiting earlier in the day,) and I drove back to the doctor's office to return the receiver boxes after putting them to bed. Neither one has passed their pill cam yet though, which is disappointing because this probably means they'll drop them at school/therapy tomorrow, and maybe this is weird but I kind of want to save them as a souvenir. Cleaned, of course.
Anyway, initial results from the visual scopes were reported to us, though biopsies and pill cam data won't be compiled and reviewed for another couple of weeks. Surprisingly, Minifobette showed no damage to her colon, but the doctor told us that's often the case with the very youngest children who are already being treated with diet; the disease's progression is held at least somewhat in check. The small intestine is where the problem always originates, which is why the pill cam procedure is so important. She's still got some 20 feet of digestive tract to be examined, compared to the roughly 4 feet that can be seen with a traditional scope.
But the boy, he has a good amount of colon damage, in addition to what we're waiting to find in the small intestine. It's not 100% awful from stem to stern, but there's a large section that truly ain't pretty. They gave us printouts of all the captured images before we left the surgery center. See below.
|